Disc drives are known to store digital information on rigid discs coated with a magnetizable material and a plurality of circular, concentric data tracks. Discs are mounted on a spindle motor which rotates the discs for operation. Disc heads are positioned relative to the data tracks to read and write data to the disc surface via an actuating mechanism. Electronic circuitry is coupled to the spindle motor and actuation mechanism for positioning the disc heads for reading information from and writing information to selected data tracks.
Disc heads include transducers for reading and writing data to the disc surface. Transducers may be an inductive-type transducer or magnetoresistive (MR) transducer. Thus, depending upon the transducer elements, various lead wires are necessary to electrically connect the transducers to electric circuitry of the disc drive. In particular, the lead wires are connected from the transducer elements to a flexible cable circuit. The flexible cable circuit is coupled to a central processor for retrieving data from discs of the disc drive.
Lead wires for each disc heads are connected to contacts via a soldering process. Each disc head has multiple lead wires for connecting transducer elements to the processing circuitry of the disc drive. Due to the size limitations of the disc drive, contacts for multiple lead wires are spaced in close proximity to one another. Thus, aligning and connecting specific lead wires to various contacts requires precision placement and soldering so that a good electrical connection is made between the respective lead wire and contact.
Soldering instruments include a soldering element having a soldering tip. During the soldering process, the soldering tip is heated so that an end of the soldering tip may melt solder to connect lead wires to contacts. During soldering, exposed portions of the soldering tip may improperly contact certain lead wires, thus interfering with the electrical connection of the wire to a particular contact or fusing the leads together. So, it is desirable to provide a soldering instrument which limits the interference of the soldering tip with other lead wires while soldering a particular lead wire to a contact. The present invention provides a solution to this and other problems, and offers advantages over the prior art.